Continuing to hack my way through the 400s without resorting to reading dictionaries, I was thrilled to learn that Jhumpa Lahiri had written a book about learning Italian. Otherwise, I would have had to resort to claiming the first third of Eat, Pray, Love, on the grounds that I learned "attraverso" (let's cross over) from it. That was one of Gilbert's favorite words, and Lahiri had hers, too. As I was listening to Lahiri read her own audiobook, her beautifully pronounced Italian became a convincing soundtrack for her love story... the story of how she fell in love with the Italian language.
Lahiri didn't just fall in love with Italian-- she committed to it. She moved to Rome and made a vow to write only in Italian. The main thing that has come out of that vow so far was this memoir, which contains two very satisfying short stories and a number of more or less chronological but somewhat repetitive essays. While this is not the greatest book or even the greatest memoir I have ever read, it must have been pretty effective, since it did inspire me to action.
Lahiri's description of reading on the sofa with a pen, a notebook and a dictionary made me want to read in a foreign language again, too. I used to read a lot of French-- Andre Gide, Victor Hugo-- and I used to read the Bible in Spanish every day. Becoming more fluent in Spanish would really be useful, and reading the Bible in a modern translation might help me with that. Lahiri talks about how reading in a third language, one she was still learning, forced her to read more slowly, so this practice might help me devotionally as well. If I actually follow through!
